For Late ‘Mr. Mayor,’ a Last Tour of Town

William Donald Schaefer, the former mayor of Baltimore, was ushered through the city Monday like a head of state, his coffin on a whirlwind tour of this city that he loved.

SABRINA TAVERNISE

BALTIMORE — Even after his death, William Donald Schaefer was still performing. The former mayor of Baltimore was ushered through the city on Monday like a head of state, his coffin on a whirlwind tour of this city that he loved, and that loved him.

A motorcade led by a shiny black hearse cruised through closed streets, making stops at some of his most famous achievements, including the National Aquarium, the stadium at Camden Yards and the Inner Harbor, the glittering heart of downtown that is considered one of the country’s greatest urban renewal success stories.

It ended at City Hall, where a small crowd watched as his coffin was unloaded near a giant American flag hung between two fire engine ladders.

“This is history,” said Bernard Smith, 43, who had come with his 13-year-old daughter. “We’re never going to have another mayor like him.”

It was a fitting finale for a man who loved public spectacles, and it gave the residents of this city a chance to pay their respects to Mr. Schaefer, a ferociously energetic politician whom many locals referred to as “Mr. Mayor” or “Willie Don,” and who served in elected office for most of his 89 years. A public funeral will be held on Wednesday.

But the applause and tributes seemed to be as much about this city’s yearning to return to the Schaefer era, to a time when anything seemed possible, and before the city’s vast social problems settled too deeply into its bones.

“Sometimes you just want to go back to the old days and the old ways, when there were morals and grace and respect,” said Melody Sayre, 54, a bus driver who lived near Mr. Schaefer. “He was the last of the Mohicans. He was an original man.”

By all accounts, Mr. Schaefer made this gritty port city feel good about itself at a time — after the race riots and a long-term decline in manufacturing and transport jobs — when its spirits were touching new lows.

“He put Baltimore on the map,” Ms. Sayre said.

But while his downtown development gave the economy a boost, those gains ultimately were swept away by the storm of social and economic woes — like the crack epidemic and the dwindling numbers of working-class jobs — that continued unabated, and have made it one of the country’s most troubled cities and a natural backdrop for police-themed television series like “The Wire” and “Homicide: Life on the Street.”

“What Schaefer did was mostly psychological,” said Matthew Crenson, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University. “He turned around the city’s morale, but not so much its economy.”

Marc Levine, a professor of history and economic development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said Mr. Schaefer might have stopped Baltimore from becoming an abandoned city like Detroit, but he nevertheless was unable to stem its economic decline.

Today, less than half of the city’s working-age, black male population is employed, down from 68 percent in 1970. And despite the downtown renaissance, it has relentlessly lost ground as a regional employment center, with just 25 percent of the Baltimore region’s jobs, down from 62 percent in 1970. Fifty years later, the city continues to lose residents, and it is now home to just 23 percent of the population of the larger metro area, down from 44 percent in 1970.

“He had an important impact, but that doesn’t mean he turned the city around,” said Professor Levine, who has studied Baltimore. “All the indicators suggest that the larger economic trajectory remained unchanged.”

But that mattered little to people who were celebrating him on Monday, who praised him as a down-to-earth man who helped them feel a sense of pride about their city.

“You got somebody right in your ’hood who’s a household name, and who didn’t just move out here to get votes,” said a 53-year-old man who identified himself only by his nickname, Keystone. “That inspires young people that maybe they can do something.”

Perhaps the biggest regret voiced by city residents in interviews after his death last week was that Mr. Schaefer did not apply his laser focus and frenetic energy to the school system, which through the decades grew to be one of the poorest, and lowest-achieving in the country.

According to Professor Levine, spending on education, adjusted for inflation, fell by a fifth from 1971 to 1986, the years of Mr. Schaefer’s tenure as mayor.

“He built buildings and things you could celebrate now, but he didn’t fix the schools,” said Sandra Banisky, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland, who used to cover Mr. Schaefer as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.

Professor Banisky added, “That would have meant dealing with poverty and broken families, and you wouldn’t see results for decades.”

It would also have meant stepping into a political minefield at a time when racial tensions were boiling and school affairs were closely linked to issues of race, said Marion Orr, a political science professor at Brown University.

Though by all accounts painfully shy, Mr. Schaefer was also a master of the goofy, something that people seemed to like. The well-known image of him holding a rubber ducky in a pool in a Victorian-style bathing suit is emblazoned on a poster in the Aquarium where it happened.

“He was letting people know that just because he was in office, it didn’t mean he couldn’t have fun,” said Mr. Smith, who has worked in the security department there for 22 years.

Mr. Schaefer’s eccentricity did not disappoint in death: He died with his cat, Willie, sitting nearby, not long after a friend played “Maryland, My Maryland” for him on the trumpet by phone.

Lisa Widener, an unemployed typist who had taken the bus to City Hall to pay her respects, said she yearned for the past when Mr. Schaefer was mayor and jobs were easier to come by.

Mr. Smith said he would never forget Mr. Schaefer, not least because his policies provided a steady job. In an era when most politicians “are just trying to copy other folks,” he said, Mr. Schaefer had vision.

“It’s like, can y’all top that?” he said, motioning to the empty space where the ceremony had been. “No. None of you can.”

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